JULIAN  The three men stood at the headwaters of the San Dieguito River early Saturday morning along a steep slope on the south side of Volcan Mountain near Julian.

“This is the beginning of it all,” said Jim Cunningham. “Isn’t it fantastic?”

It’s where the river begins, eventually flowing all the way to the coast in Del Mar.

The men began hiking down a private road toward the Volcan Mountain Preserve to start the first leg of a quest to hike every trail within the San Dieguito River Park by the end of next month.

2).Dick Bobertz, Jim Cunningham and Bill Simmons begin a hike Saturday morning that will take them on all 55 miles of trails within the San Dieguito River Park. The trail stretches from the coast in Del Mar to Volcan Mountain near Julian, however it will be years before all the various trails will be connected. UT photo by J. Harry Jones

2).Dick Bobertz, Jim Cunningham and Bill Simmons begin a hike Saturday morning that will take them on all 55 miles of trails within the San Dieguito River Park. The trail stretches from the coast in Del Mar to Volcan Mountain near Julian, however it will be years before all the various trails will be connected. UT photo by J. Harry Jones

The Coast-to-Crest Trail, as it is known, will one day offer hikers a single, contiguous path from the ocean to the mountains. Right now there are 55 miles of trails developed but it will be years before all of them are connected.

Saturday morning Cunningham, 56, a Poway City Councilman who is also this year’s chairman of the San Dieguito River Park Joint Powers Authority, was joined by Dick Bobertz, 67, the JPA’s executive director, and by Bill Simmons, 76, a longtime member of the San Dieguito River Valley Conservancy. Cunningham called the other two “icons in the world of the San Dieguito River Park.”

And they were having fun.

The threesome plan on hiking as much as possible in the coming weeks. Saturday’s journey was to be about 10 miles.

It was all Cunningham’s idea and he’s been in training for months to get ready.

“It a great idea,” Bobertz said.

“The notion is not only to hike the entirety of the trail because of the challenge,” said Cunningham, “but to give the public an awareness of the unbelievable opportunities this trail offers people to get out, to hike, to understand how important our backcountry is and open spaces and to getting the Coast-to-Crest trail completed.”

Cunningham said maybe someone will hear about their journey and think it would be a great legacy for their family to donate property to make the completion of the trail a bit closer.

The trail is really a byproduct of the greater mission of both the JPA and the nonprofit conservancy which raises funds to preserve open space within the valleys the river flows though.

“Our goal is to protect as much open space as we can in the valley,” said Simmons, who has served on the conservancy board for 15 years. “We’re not just focused on the trail. In fact there were years where we didn’t even think about the trail. We were just trying to buy land to keep it open, and we’re still doing that.”

Bobertz said “byproduct” is the right word. “Our real mission is to preserve natural habitat.

“How does the trail fit in? It fits in because what we don’t want are a lot of people out with mountain bikes and horses and so forth riding all over the hills and causing erosion. This is a very fragile and delicate habitat. The trail keeps people on a trail which is engineered to not erode and we have rangers to keep people and their dogs on the trail, and that protects the watershed.”